When Elisa Les Bons Tuyaux landed in Nice, France, last week, the Paris-based lifestyle blogger considered hitting the supermarket to stock her 60 euro-per-night Airbnb. But one day later, as she cruised the palm-dappled Boulevard de la Croisette, she quickly realized there was no need for groceries. Champagne, oysters, ice cream, espresso, arugula salads, and croissants came free inside the activations and events hosted by brands like Magnum, Mouton Cadet, Villa Schweppes, Nespresso, and L’Oréal—all vying for social-media publicity during the picturesque international event that is the Cannes Film Festival.

“You should try the iced macchiato,” Les Bon Tuyaux advised Saturday afternoon, as we sat in a banquette on the white sandy beach of Nespresso’s activation. A few days into the fest, Les Bon Tuyaux had figured out the best gratis menu items and was happy to make recommendations.

Several months earlier, Les Bon Tuyaux quit her full-time marketing job so that she could attend and cover the events flooding her inbox for her 10,000 blog subscribers. When an invitation to join Magnum at the Cannes Film Festival came her way from French P.R. agency Frederic Henry Communications—followed by more e-mails from other Cannes-bound brands—Les Bon Tuyaux whipped out her credit card and booked her flight. In addition to the free perks, she also has been soaking up the incredible rooftop views and movie-star sightings, expanding her Rolodex, and putting herself on the radar of major international brands.

Wearing a Diane von Furstenberg floral dress, espadrilles, sunglasses, and bangle bracelets—all comped, natch—Les Bon Tuyaux looked the part of a lifestyle blogger living the movie-star experience at Cannes. Her dream, when she comes back next year, is to join the ranks of the brand ambassadors, with all expenses—transportation, hotel, food, entertainment—comped by a brand in exchange for flattering coverage paid per post.

You used to hear about boys and girls growing up wanting to become movie stars. But with the proliferating importance of social media, the next generation’s equivalent ambition may be attaining paid-influencer status—creating FOMO for a living, without the handicap of paparazzi or grueling casting calls.

“This is the second year that influencers have been so integrated into the Cannes Film Festival for parties,” explained Cyril Attias, who founded the first social and influencer agency in France, Agence des Medias Sociaux, in 2010, and helped match companies with influencers for this year’s festival. “Brands are very focused on influencers because they put a lot of money into their programming on the beach and need exposure. The influencers are like V.I.P. guests for the brand—where they, for example with Magnum, talked with [celebrity ambassadors this year] Bella Hadid and Alexander Wang, were involved in branding, and explored Cannes through the brand experience. Sometimes they get more access than journalists”—who can be over-stretched and unpredictable. Influencers, on the other hand, may “have more followers than press, or are more complimentary.”

This year, Attias began working with brands on their Cannes Film Festival activations in January—matching companies with suitable “ambassadors,” like Madison Ramaget, a cute brunette vlogger/blogger with more than 180,000 Instagram followers, and Enzo Carini, a French male model with nearly 850,000 followers. One of Madison’s three Magnum-related Instagram posts this week was a video of her sitting on the beach—the Mediterranean Sea outstretched behind her—wearing sunglasses and an off-the-shoulder pink top, eating a Magnum ice-cream bar and answering cheeky questions about herself.

One of Enzo’s posts featured him on the beach posing seductively with a white-chocolate ice-cream bar while leaning up against a glass display case, holding the brand’s Alexander Wang-designed limited collection item—a handmade leather-covered cooler bag retailing for $895.

“They have to match the brand DNA,” Attias said of the influencers he chooses. “They are very good photographers. They are sharing good content, they are happy. We want them to have fun on behalf of the brand.”

To facilitate the fun quotient, Attias worked out a deal with Uber this year to have their helicopters fly his social-media squad from the Nice airport to the Cannes beach, so that they could make an A-list entrance on the Croisette. Attias’s company booked the influencers’ travel and lodging (hotel rooms or villas) and managed their schedule according to how many partnerships each influencer had booked—allotting an average of two days per sponsor: “We say, ’O.K., you get two days with Magnum, two days with Nespresso.’ They get breaks in their schedule, but not to watch movies.”

Brands can reportedly pay between 1,000 and 20,000 euro for a single social-media post, but because the festival offers influencers so much international exposure—not to mention proximity to movie stars and a gorgeous backdrop—the rates at Cannes are often negotiated down. Though festival-goers sometime complain of the bustling branding scene pumping Euro club music onto the beach at all hours, someone needs to foot the festival bill and the influencer contingent will likely only increase. Attias’s business at Cannes, he said, has doubled each of the past three years.

The influencers aren’t the only members dipping into the more lucrative marketing gigs. This year, movie stars like Helen Mirren came to the Cannes Film Festival not to promote a movie, but to guest-star on one of L’Oréal’s Worth It Show presentations—a talk show staged each evening at the open-air L’Oréal studio as the sun sets over the Mediterranean. Jane Fonda is scheduled to make her own appearance. Julianne Moore,Marion Cotillard, and Kendall Jenner attended Chopard events. As world-renowned actresses—underpaid compared to their male co-stars—snap up sponsorship opportunities, this year’s Cannes features a few millennial multi-hyphenates doing the same.

German actress and food blogger Janina Uhse came to Cannes this year to work with Magnum, as well as promote the movie Hotel Transylvania 3, which is represented on the Croisette with a giant activation on a pier. (Uhse voices the role of Mavis in the German version of the film.) She also attended events for the German film industry, met potential professional partners, and posted a few picturesque Instagrams to her over 700,000 Instagram followers.

“I did have a partnership for the events here with Magnum, which was super fun. And I did enjoy working with the brand. However, it‘s not really comparable to the long-term partnerships with the brands that I have been working with for a long time now, like Lancôme (official German testimonial) or Fossil (official German ambassador),” Uhse told Vanity Fair, as she and her manager made their way to the Nice airport. “I was also lucky to be invited to the showrooms and lounges of jewelry brands, like MESSIKA and de Grisogono.”

Asked about balancing her careers as an actor and as an influencer, Uhse said, “First of all, I am an actress, and I‘ve been an actress since I was 7 years old. My acting career and being in the public through my roles have given me the opportunity to grow a social following and work with amazing partners that allow me to experience another side of my job.” Asked which gig is more lucrative, she said, “I don‘t think that it‘s a secret that commercial jobs have always had bigger budgets than the arts.”

On Saturday, back at the Nespresso suite, Les Bons Tuyaux admitted that she had not yet told her parents—members of the pre-social-media generation—about quitting her full-time job. After the confession, she had a flash of anxiety cross her face. But it was brief. Even without a paycheck, sitting on the French Riviera and soaking up the festival freebies wasn’t too bad.

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